Caesura
by Estoma
Summary: A story in a single sentence. Four victors reach the point of the 3rd Quell.


**Author's note: An exercise in constrained writing. For Muffin, in the GGE 2014. Using the prompt: Appearance, from the Caesar's Palace Forum. Please feel welcome to join us for more fun. For ease of reading, I suggest you 'expand' the text on your viewer. **

With the bone-shaking blast of the final canon still echoing in your ears like a frantic heartbeat, you're broken down on the blood-soaked ground and falling, into what, you're not sure, only that it's dark and you feel as if you should turn back but the light draws you onwards, but no; it's not a light, only the glimmer of gold laurel fashioned into a crown for a victor, with leaves as sharp as dark green holly and poisonous like the nightshade that grows in the forest between the roots of the old grandfather-oaks that remember the Dark Days and when Panem's borders were written out in the blood of its children, and perhaps they even remember a better time, when they were merely saplings, but they can't divulge, just like your mentors can't share what being a victor really means until it's too late and the jaws of the steel trap slam shut and that's when you find out that it's harder than steel buried under snow, harder than frozen ground when it's time to dig a grave in the middle of winter (lucky your brother is so small) as it all comes pouring out like melt-water in spring; a foul, soiled torrent, picking up debris and the bloated corpses of the creatures that got caught in the rush, just as you're caught up and swept along with the diamond necklaces, rotten logs and wrapped-tied-up in silk sheets staring at your own naked silhouette splashed across the side of a building fifty stories high; you thought the camera was just for him, and sure as hell you didn't argue because a camera's better than cuffs, better than leather and buckles, better than finding out just how red your blood is when it spills forth like so many lies and regrets, but back then you hadn't told many lies that counted (only that you kissed a boy behind his father's sawmill and you almost wanted to get caught because his hands were chapped and cold under your shirt) and you certainly didn't have a taste for drink, but oh, that didn't take long to acquire; now, you can't even remember when you stopped remembering your nights and mornings-afternoons, too-which is better than the gut-wrenching, head splitting pain when you're sober; sometimes it feels as if that brute from District 1 did manage to plant his dagger between your ribs like a puzzle piece sliding into place to reveal an image that nobody really wants to see, so it's not uncommon for you to wish (with your head over the toilet and raw ethanol rising and scorching your nostrils) that he did, but you've learnt that, buried down deep, humans have a damned flame that just won't go out, and it didn't let you give up, even if it did scorch you inside and out until you were changed beyond recognition because-it's crazy, it really is-you volunteered for this, and to this day, apart from one or two shining moments with _him_ ('I love you' snatched under the pier with the water lapping against your thighs; it doesn't matter it's shark-time because you're both victors and really, you're used to the element of danger) that's the pinnacle and the spark that reminds you that maybe you're not bad to the core even if you did send four plain white coffins back to the districts, because when the child was Reaped, all of sixteen and slim like a reed, you took her place and saved her life, didn't you, and not even the flood can wash it away, even if it did hurl the bodies of your fellow tributes against the cliffs or force cold and deadly fingers down into their lungs; some of the bodies couldn't be retrieved for hours, tangled in the limbs of uprooted trees, but one floated free and drifted past you, carried so close by the current that you could have reached out and taken its cold fingers, but it was too late for that, and wrong, too, because it's a fight to the death; you thought it would end, but oh, how you were wrong, because even though the golden tines are festooned with spider webs on your mantle-piece it's like a minefield amongst the cherry-red and banana-blue skyscrapers (yes, the Capitol feel yellow is out of fashion) that stretch to pierce the sky, and while you walk among them on a floor of glass the clouds shift sometimes to reveal a shadow of the ground below that chills you to the bone and forces your tired fingers to cling tighter to the spires (they wouldn't tear out your tongue, but maybe _hers_) and pray there won't be a breeze, because if it comes, the waves will rise too high and break too hard and you wonder-whisper-when it's all going to stop; how many more targets will you carve into the trees, how many times will you see the bottom of a bottle, how many times will you see his head roll and how many hands will traverse your body, but you don't dare ask for an answer so it's a surprise when it does come with the suddenness of a storm at sea, wind in the trees, the rumble of dynamite underground, and it's as if you've reached the eye of the storm where you can take a moment's rest, a deep breath, then let the games begin.


End file.
